All the exercises and problems of the chapter, worked through step by step, in the order in which they appear in the book: first the guided exercises in the text (semi-log and bilog), then the problems from the two end-of-chapter sections (conceptual, true/false, ranking, graphs, numerical, Fermi estimates), and the worked exercises on significant figures and error propagation.
Guided exercises in the text
Problems — first section
- Direct or indirect measurement
- Experimental law and hypothesis
- True or false about graphs
- Log-log bounce
- Impact speed and coefficient of restitution
- Manual stopwatch versus photogates
- Sum of bounce times
- Bacteria and semi-log graph
- Fermi estimate: measurements of g
- Ranking instrument uncertainty
- Independent, dependent, and confounding variables
- Which graph do you expect (T vs m)
- Reproducibility of oil density
- True or false about experimental errors
- Study on aspirin
Problems — second section
- Physical law versus correlation
- Popper’s falsification
- Significant figures
- Precision versus accuracy
- Linear graph y = kx
- Controlled variables in a gas
- Significant figures, ranking
- Law from pendulum data
- Precision required on g
- Measurement without error
- Threshold laws
- Fermi estimate: school experiments in Italy
- How many repetitions to confirm a law
- Critiquing the graph: extrapolation
- Small sample (coin)
- Systematic versus random error
- Indeterminacy and method
- Designing the measurement of g
- Bertrand’s paradox
- Error propagation in a product
- Mean and standard deviation
- Calibration curve
- Exponent from a bilog graph
- Precision of three instruments
- Disturbance-free measurement
- Human stopwatch
- One experiment, one study
- Relative uncertainty in a quotient